While on this furlough I of course visited my home; but although my mother, sisters, and brothers received me joyfully, and treated me with great kindness, my father positively refused to see or speak to me, and even said that he would "horsewhip me whenever he could get a sight of me;" so, after remaining cooped up in a bedroom for a couple of days, I returned to my kind sister at Mugginton, and shortly after left for my regiment, where, in the spirit-stirring incidents constantly occurring, I soon got over the unpleasant feeling always engendered in the mind of a soldier by the visit to, and leave-taking of, his relatives and friends in his native village. That little word "good-bye" leaves a very unpleasant sensation after shaking hands and kissing a kind and indulgent mother, whose heart is well-nigh broken through her son leaving her, perhaps for ever, to follow the fortunes of war. My mother said she never went to bed but she prayed for me, and she never awoke in the night but her "soldier-son" was uppermost in her mind. She is dead now, and I often think that my leaving home to become a soldier might have hastened her end, for she died at the age of sixty-five. But after all comes the balm to my qualms of conscience for any breach of duty I may have been guilty of to my parents,--I have still done my duty to my country. Besides these furloughs granted to well-conducted soldiers, they are frequently indulged with a few hours or days' "passes" to spend with any friends they may have in the vicinity of the barracks. A soldier may be invited to an evening party, or he may wish to spend a few extra hours with a sweet heart, go to church or chapel with her, or, more frequently, take her to a theatre, the admittance to which she generally pays out of her own pocket-money. These "passes" may be obtained by a good soldier about once a week, so that in place of having to be in barracks by nine o'clock, he may, when furnished with a "pass," signed by the captain of his troop, prolong his stay until any hour that may be convenient to him to return; but the time is generally limited to twelve, one, two, or three o'clock, so as to allow him to have a little sleep before the reveille sounds, at five o'clock in summer and six in winter. Some of these "late" soldiers are fond of playing practical jokes upon their comrades, who are generally sound asleep when they return from these passes, and enter the barrack-rooms in the dark, for lights are not allowed to be struck on any pretence whatever.